


Who Gives Life To The Dead

by Pargoletta



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Childhood Memories, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Howard Stark, Jewish Steve Rogers, Legends Come To Life, Moving On, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta
Summary: Tony Stark was raised on the legend of Captain America, just like every other kid.  Unlike every other kid, he was raised on Howard Stark’s version, and he loved and despised that Captain America like a saintly, long-dead brother.  But after a fortnight that begins with a funny video and ends with an alien invasion, Tony realizes that it’s time to get to know Steve Rogers.





	1. Shifting Wind, Falling Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to this story! It came from several different ideas and images, all coming together in the end. To my surprise and delight, it turned out to be a story about Tony Stark. I have enjoyed writing little bits of Tony in the past, so it was fun to write a whole story about him. He’s got an interestingly crunchy, complicated psyche with lots of conflicting feelings about – well, about everything, but certainly about both Captain America and Howard. Enjoy, and I’ll meet you at the end.

  1. **Shifting Wind, Falling Rain**



  

 

A multitude of sounds intruded on Tony Stark’s consciousness, though he wasn’t quite sure which one of them had actually woken him up. The leading candidates seemed to be a loud banging coming from beneath him, an animated conversation between Pepper and a strange man in the next room, and the dinging of his text alert right by his ear. He sat up, stiff and sore from having once again fallen asleep in a chair in his workroom, and glanced around. It appeared to be late morning, judging by the rays of sunshine that filtered through the half-closed blinds, and the rest of the world, which, for some unfathomable reason, did not run on Stark Standard Time, was hard at work carrying on and making noise.

“Urgh,” Tony said, to no one in particular. He glanced at the various mugs and glasses scattered around the workroom, but they all seemed to be either empty or containing the dregs of something no longer especially appetizing. Tony snapped his fingers. “DUM-E!” 

The little robot trundled over to him. Tony reached out and grabbed it before it could bonk into the worktable. “Coffee,” he told it. “Or a smoothie. One or the other. Dealer’s choice.” 

DUM-E whistled and swung its arm around in a vague sort of way. 

“I don’t care which,” Tony said. “Whichever one you can find first.”

DUM-E beeped, spun around, and rolled away. 

Tony glanced at his phone. It told him that he had one voicemail and two text messages. He decided to listen to the voicemail first, because he could work on the task of keeping his eyes open and focused while he did that. 

_“Mr. Stark,”_ came a familiar voice. Tony screwed his eyes shut upon hearing that familiar baritone. _“Nick Fury here. We have a situation at SHIELD, and we feel that your advice would be invaluable. Call me at my cell phone as soon as you get this.”_

Tony checked the call log and found the number. He decided not to call immediately. Part of it was that he still didn’t quite feel awake yet, but another part of him burned with resentment that Fury seemed to feel that Tony was at his beck and call. Just because he had agreed to be a consultant for SHIELD didn’t make him a lackey. Instead, he opened the text messages. 

Both of them were from Rhodey, currently stationed . . . somewhere on the other side of the world. Singapore, or Cambodia, or maybe somewhere in Blah-blah-stan. He was supposed to be locating and taking out Ten Rings terror cells, but Tony supposed that Rhodey was off shift now, wherever he was. That was good. He approved of little mental heath breaks, especially when they involved Rhodey sending him messages. He looked at the first one. 

_The weirdest thing just came on CNN. Half the guys in the unit think it’s fake, but I don’t know. What do you think?_

The next message contained a link to a video. Tony poked the link, and then set his phone in the projector cradle, so that he didn’t have to squint. It was a shaky tourist video, shot in Times Square, and a reporter was talking over it. The video and the news item appeared to be from two days ago. Tony remembered that there had been some sort of huge traffic tie-up in Midtown. He had spent the day working on power cables for the Tower, but Pepper had been trying to meet a client at Aureole, and had returned home intensely frustrated from trying to fight her way through the crowds. Apparently, the cause of all the fuss was that a crazy man who looked a bit like Captain America had run out into the middle of traffic, right in Times Square. He’d been apprehended by what the reporter speculated were private security guards. The anchors were speculating that the man might be the rumored third son of a well-known, famously flamboyant real-estate mogul who lived just outside the city. 

Except . . . Tony took a closer look at the video. It was blurry and shaky, and full of moving people, but there was something naggingly familiar about it. The man in the video certainly looked like Captain America – Tony considered himself something of an expert on photos of Captain America, considering how many of them his father had surrounded himself with – and he was clearly confused, looking wildly around as if he were trying to figure out where he was. And then Nick Fury stepped into the frame. 

As soon as he saw that, Tony was wide awake. There was no way that Nick Fury would deign to waste time talking down a random crazy man, even a real-estate mogul’s son who might or might not exist. Nick Fury would not be out in Times Square talking gently to anyone less than actual Captain Goddamn America. 

The video was short, only about a minute and a half, and Tony watched it three times before he picked up his phone and texted Rhodey. 

_That’s the real thing. Holy fuckballs. Don’t know how, but it’s real. I’ll do some digging, let you know what I find out._

He played the video one more time, and then called Nick Fury. 

Fury picked up on the second ring. “Mr. Stark,” he said. “Good to hear from you. We have –“ 

“I saw the video. You have Captain America.” 

Fury sighed. “The CNN footage?” 

“Bingo.” 

“Well, three cheers for tourists with cell phones.” Fury’s voice was as dry as if he were reading the stock reports. “So your opinion is that the man in the video is in fact Captain America?” 

Tony rolled his eyes, since Fury couldn’t see. “Yes, that’s Captain America. I grew up in a house that had little shrines to His Patriotic-ness, remember? More importantly, you think he’s Captain America, because you’re the one out there making nice to him. Yes, I think he’s Captain America. Did you really need me to tell you this?” 

“No. That was just a preliminary. You’re a SHIELD consultant, Mr. Stark, and I need to consult you.” 

“Fine. Go ahead. What do you need?” The banging had not stopped, and Tony could feel a monster headache starting to form behind his right eye. 

Fury paused, as if considering how to frame his request. “I’d appreciate some advice about how to introduce him to the world,” he said. “We got off to . . . a bit of a rocky start, you could say.” 

“Worse than that video?” 

“Yeah.” 

The monster headache was really gaining steam now. “You do realize that I don’t actually know him, right? Dad knew him, told me stories about him, but he’d been taking the ice nap for a quarter century before I was even born.” 

“Mm-hm,” Fury said. “I understand that. Still, you may know something that the official records can’t tell us. We’ve got an apartment set up for him when he’s ready. Maybe you could suggest a few other things we could recommend to give him some support. Ease him back into the world. Suggestions for a suitable place to go and meet people. The right church, for instance.”

“Not a church.” The words left Tony’s mouth before he could think about them, and a thin tendril of guilt uncoiled in his brain. It wasn’t something that Dad had ever talked about directly, and Tony had never been sure whether it was supposed to be a secret or not. 

Fury didn’t seem to notice. “Ah,” he said. “I understand. That wasn’t entirely clear in his records. I’d wondered about that.” 

Tony could sympathize. He knew of the existence of at least one Ph.D. dissertation suggesting that Captain America was Jewish, and several others proving equally vigorously that Captain America was either Catholic, Episcopalian, or, in one entertainingly offbeat case, a sort of proto-Scientologist. But there was one thing that all of the dissertations could agree on. 

“Don’t push him there,” he told Fury. “Just . . . let him be. Dad always said he was a stubborn SOB, didn’t deal well with people telling him how to live his life.” 

Fury chuckled. “I could say the same about you.” 

“So did Dad. Often, and with rich variety.” 

“I get it,” Fury said, and Tony suspected that he really didn’t, but he appreciated the sentiment anyway. “We’ll have recommendations available if he asks, but we won’t push.” 

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Just let him live his life. That was what Dad and Peg said. He never got to live his life.” 

Fury was silent for a moment. “What about you?” he asked. “Do you want to meet him? We could set something up. I think he’d at least be interested to see you.” 

Tony didn’t even have to think about that one. “No. I don’t want to meet him.” 

“All right,” Fury said. “I won’t schedule a meeting. You can always change your mind if you want. But I will let him know that you exist. No contact information, just . . . let him know that Howard had a son.” 

Tony sighed. In an ideal world, he would have absolutely no form of contact with Captain America whatsoever, unless it were wholly on his terms. Of course, that ideal world probably wouldn’t have a ninety-three-story skyscraper with his name on it towering over midtown Manhattan, so it wasn’t really ideal after all. Fury’s plan wasn’t ideal, but Tony conceded that it was at least workable. “Fine,” he said. 

“He deserves that much.” 

“That’s what Dad would have said. Anything else?” 

“Not right now. But keep the phone on. I’ll call you if anything comes up. Take care.” With that, Fury ended the call.

Tony sat and stared at his phone, wondering whether the churning in his gut was guilt, fear, excitement, or a really terrible hangover. He might have sat and stared for a long time, but something prodded his leg. He looked down and saw DUM-E offering him a smoothie glass. Tony sucked up a mouthful through the straw without really looking at it, only to be jerked back to reality by the bitter taste of stale coffee infusing the clean taste of greens, fruit, and liquid chlorophyll. He choked down the bitter mouthful, and was about to yell at DUM-E when he remembered a half-empty coffee cup that he had left by the smoothie blender. _Whichever one you can find first_ , he’d told DUM-E. 

Tony sighed, and patted DUM-E on the chassis. Then he got up, dumped the coffee-infused smoothie down the workroom sink, and went to go find Pepper.

 

 

Pepper was in one of the office suites a few floors down, looking impossibly controlled as she carried on an animated conversation with a nondescript man in a dark suit and supervised a crew of workmen installing computer grids in the walls, all while walking on a pair of elegant black-and-white four-inch heels. Tony saw that the work crew had opened up one of the access shafts, and realized that they had been the source of the banging that he had heard. He scrubbed his hand over his face, walked into the suite, and clapped the foreman of the work crew on the shoulder. 

“Quitting time,” he said. “Pack it in early today, guys. Full pay. I just need a moment.”

The foreman shrugged, but didn’t argue with Tony’s deal. “Whatever, boss,” he said. He turned and gave a sharp whistle to the men installing the grids, and the banging died down. 

Tony breathed a sigh of relief. “That goes for you, too, Man In Black,” he said. “I need to take up a good chunk of Ms. Potts’s time.” 

“Mr. Stark,” the suit said. “It’s good to see you again. Ms. Potts said you’d been busy.” He held out a hand. 

Tony stared at it for a moment, blinking, and then looked up at its owner. He recognized Nick Fury’s lackey with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re here because why?” 

Pepper stepped gracefully between them. “Tony,” she said, in the voice that she usually used to signal that his behavior was starting to become unsociable at cocktail parties. “You remember Agent Coulson from SHIELD, right?” 

Tony gritted his teeth and plastered a smile over his face. “Sure I do. Agent, tell me all about what brings you to Stark Tower. Some other time, when I care.” 

“Agent Coulson was helping me oversee the special network installations for the SHIELD suite,” Pepper said. “And he was just hinting about something new that his colleagues picked up in the Arctic.” 

“And which was fleeing through Times Square in a panic yesterday?” Tony asked, widening his grin to show a few more teeth. 

Agent Coulson had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Ah,” he said. “Fury’s brought you up to speed on that?” 

“He mentioned it.” 

“I see. Well, then.” Coulson gave a nervous little half-smile. “Not one of SHIELD’s finest moments, but we think everything’s under control now.” 

“Good.” Tony slid his arm around Coulson’s shoulders and urged him away from Pepper. “Why don’t you go back to the mothership and make sure that’s still the case? As owner of this building – and your landlord – I need to have a chat with my associate here. About . . . building things. Give my best to Fury.” He steered Coulson toward the door. Coulson glanced back at Pepper. 

“We’ll pick this up again another time,” Pepper said, just as Tony shoved Coulson out the door.

Tony waited a few moments for the work crew to clear the room. When he was sure that he and Pepper were alone, he let out a great sigh and let his shoulders slump. Pepper wheeled an office chair over and made Tony sit in it. 

“Tony?” she said. “What’s wrong?” 

Faced with a point-blank question, Tony found himself at a loss to explain. “Rhodey sent me a video,” he began, and then he stopped, not quite sure if Pepper would understand the significance. “What did Agent . . . Agent tell you about the news at SHIELD?” 

Pepper shrugged. “Honestly, he didn’t have time to say much. He’d just mentioned it when you came in. Said that there had been an amazing discovery in the Arctic, a real red-letter day, something about a wonderful new asset for some team or other. He’d been privileged to be there for part of it. I don’t know. He looked pretty starry-eyed. Do you know anything more about it? What did they find?” 

“Not a what,” Tony said. “A who.” He gestured that Pepper should sit down, and she perched herself on the edge of a desk. “They found Captain America.” 

“What?” Pepper choked out a disbelieving laugh. “They actually found his body? They’ve been looking for it for years. This is going to be like when they found the _Titanic_.” 

“Except weirder.” Tony took a deep breath. “Pepper, they didn’t just find Captain America’s body. They . . . they found _Captain America_. I have no idea how, but he was apparently still alive.” 

Pepper gaped at him. “You’re joking.” 

“Not about this.” 

“How do you know?”

Tony flashed a mirthless smile. “Pictures, or it didn’t happen.” 

Tony pulled his phone from his pocket and called up the video that Rhodey had sent him. After watching it through twice, Pepper sat silent and stunned on the edge of the desk. “That was your traffic problem downtown the other day,” Tony said. 

“Oh my God,” Pepper choked out. “Oh my God. That’s real. That can’t be an actor. That has to be real. Agent Coulson said – and Mr. Fury – and . . . oh my God.” 

Tony nodded. “Fury called me. He wanted advice. Apparently, things didn’t go so well after that.” 

“Is everyone okay?” Pepper asked. 

Tony shook his head. “I don’t know. Fury didn’t seem panicked or anything. I’m guessing no one died. He wanted to know how to handle Captain America, so it looks like everyone’s present and accounted for.” 

Pepper pushed herself up from the desk and wandered over to a window. She stared out over the city, her eyes wide and blank, as if Manhattan had become an entirely different place in the blink of an eye. 

“He looked so scared,” she said at last. “Standing there in the street. He looked so scared. You don’t think about Captain America being scared. Do you think he’s all right?” She turned and looked at Tony. “Are you all right? All those stories you told me, about your father. The things he said to you. Are you – what do you do now?” 

Tony looked down at the glow of the arc reactor shining through his shirt. Twenty years after his death, Howard Stark had still found a way to teach Tony something that had saved his life. It seemed that he wasn’t quite finished with his father’s ghost even now. He pushed himself to his feet. 

“I’m going to do what I always do. You tell the work crews not to come in tomorrow. Close down the whole building. Take the day off and do something nice. I’ve got homework to do.” 

Pepper looked at him for a moment, her expression blank and lost. Then she did that thing that Tony loved but could never quite figure out, where she seemed to melt and re-form into a firm pillar of warmth and compassion, in a shift too subtle for him to see. She walked over to him, kissed him firmly on the lips, and put her arms around him. 

“I’ll take care of things here,” she said. “You take care of yourself, okay?” 

Tony nodded. “Okay.” 

He held on to Pepper a moment longer. She gave him another kiss as he let go, patted her hair into place, and strode out of the room to start dealing with the world. Tony watched her go. Then, alone in the empty office, he picked up his phone and began making lists of books and documentary films. As an afterthought, he asked JARVIS to make sure that the kitchen was well stocked with popcorn, smoothie ingredients, and dried blueberries. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.


	2. The Persistence Of Memory

  1. **The Persistence Of Memory**



 

 

Unlike the vast majority of Tony’s research projects, there was an abundance of material available for Project Who The Hell Was Captain America, Really. JARVIS helpfully scanned the New York Public Library’s selection of e-books and checked out three different biographies of Captain America. Tony had already read two of them, and he had been interviewed by the author of the third about his father’s relationship with Captain America. He skimmed that one briefly, mostly for the odd pleasure of seeing bits of his own words quoted as if they meant something. 

_Following Captain America’s death, both the military and civilian contractors searched for his body. Chief among the latter was Howard Stark. Stark’s quest was by far the longest, lasting well into the 1950s, though it was ultimately unsuccessful. “He never gave up on Captain America, or the idea of the serum,” Howard’s son Anthony recalls. “Captain America was a presence in his life well into my childhood.”_

Well, shit. Tony didn’t need a book to tell him what he already knew, what he had told its author. Besides, the frozen, static image of Captain America captured in the old photographs that enhanced these books was out of date. Captain America was unfrozen and alive, and Tony wanted an idea of who he had been in life, as a breathing, moving person. And that, he decided, was why . . . some French person or other, probably, had invented the documentary film. JARVIS had supplied him with several. He made a bowl of popcorn and a smoothie, and settled down to watch the first one on the list. 

It was one of a series of hour-long programs that The History Channel had produced in the frenzy of nostalgia around the fiftieth anniversary of the ending of the Second World War. Tony remembered Rhodey joking about “The Hitler Channel,” but being glued to the screen every night while the series had aired. This particular episode was called “After Captain America,” and it traced the adventures of Captain America’s unit in the months between his – apparent, it now seemed – death and the end of the war. 

It seemed like an odd choice, but Tony decided that he trusted JARVIS’s instincts more than his own on this point, so he watched the entire program. He learned that Dum Dum Dugan had been temporarily reassigned to the Sixth Armored Division and had participated in the liberation of Buchenwald, and that Gabe Jones had become a member of the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, and had worked with both President Truman and President Eisenhower to desegregate the Armed Forces. Tony clutched the popcorn bowl a little tighter as the stentorian voice of the narrator described Howard Stark’s dogged search for the remains of Captain America, and the new developments in imaging technology that he had pioneered along the way. 

Tony vaguely remembered a few meetings with the producer of that documentary. He had refused to grant an interview, but had loaned her a box of old family photographs and miscellaneous documents. She had returned the box a few months later with a nice thank-you letter. Sure enough, one or two of the photographs appeared on the screen as Tony watched. 

When the documentary ended, Tony had to get up and pace around for a while. “JARVIS,” he asked. “Why was that movie the first one that I saw?” 

“I have arranged my selections in alphabetical order,” JARVIS replied, with the smooth reserve that could be equal parts calming and infuriating. Tony looked again at the playlist, and discovered that “After Captain America” was, in fact, the first one listed alphabetically. 

“Okay. Why did I see it at all?” he asked. 

“You requested material concerning the identity of the soldier and war mascot called Captain America. I judged this film to fall in that category for its focus on Captain America’s impact upon his closest colleagues.” 

Tony gave a noncommittal grunt. He supposed that, technically, JARVIS was right, but that didn’t make the movie any less unsettling. He browsed through the rest of the playlist and found something called _Captain America and the Sentinels of Liberty_. It turned out to be a feature film, cheap and shoddy even by the standards of 1943. A stiff-looking Captain America posed with his shield and directed a crew of actors in a series of staged battles against . . . actually, it was a little hard to tell who the intended villains of the movie were. The stylish uniforms suggested Nazis, the acting seemed reminiscent of Kabuki more than anything else, and the tank battle among the palm trees seemed to hint that someone had recently seen _Casablanca_ but had not quite understood it. 

Tony much preferred the short bursts of footage where a war photographer had captured Captain America actually leading his soldiers. He struck Tony as humorless and hopelessly square-jawed, but at least competent at what he was doing. He looked every bit the kind of uncreative patriot who would think that crashing a plane and killing himself was a better idea than trying to reason his way out of the situation. 

By the time Pepper came into the screening room to check on him, Tony was pawing listlessly through a box of old home movie reels, wondering whether he needed to watch the film of his sixth birthday party, which Howard had insisted on staging with a Captain America theme in honor of the Bicentennial. Pepper glanced around the room and waved her hand in front of her face. 

“Phew!” she said. “It smells like B.O., stale popcorn, and rotting lettuce in here. Have you been in this same room all day with no fresh air?” 

Tony glanced up at the clock and was startled to see how late it had become. “Um . . . maybe?” 

“Okay, you’re done,” Pepper said. “You’re coming out into the real world, or at least into the kitchen, and you and I will have actual food for dinner.” 

“One more movie?” Tony asked, plastering his most appealing smile over his face. “Want to watch it with me? I’ve got – let me see – _Hero In A Bottle_. How Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark created America’s greatest weapon in the war against Nazi science. That’s according to the blurb, at least.” 

“No!” Pepper hauled Tony to his feet. “You are turning into . . . well, even more of an obsessive than you usually are.” 

“Research, Pepper.” 

“Obsession. I’m cutting you off. JARVIS, disable all media content until seven o’clock tomorrow morning, please. We’re going to have a nice dinner and then . . .” Pepper waggled her eyebrows at Tony. 

Tony considered his options. He could override Pepper’s command and spend a few more hours with a good-looking person with disgustingly impeccable morals who knew exactly what to do at all times. Or, he could follow Pepper and . . . spend a few hours with a different good-looking person with disgustingly impeccable morals who knew exactly what to do at all times, but who was also infinitely more entertaining, probably smelled better, and was almost certainly a better kisser than the other one. 

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, as Pepper pulled him out the door.

  

 

The next morning found Tony in a much better, more relaxed mood. The sun was out, the day was young, Pepper seemed to have an extra little jiggle in her stride, and Tony was convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong. His burst of energy and optimism lasted exactly one hour and thirty-seven minutes, at which point he walked into his office to find Nick Fury sitting in his guest chair drinking coffee. 

“Good morning,” Fury said. “I see you splurge on the good coffee. Appreciate it.” 

Tony blinked meaningfully at Fury. “Glad to hear it. And you made an appointment to see me when?” 

“Just now.” 

Tony had to think about that. “Your appointment is for just now, or you made the appointment just now?” 

Fury brandished a smartphone at him. “Both, as it happens. Upon further reflection, I realized that we didn’t finish our little consulting session the other day.” 

“Reflect again,” Tony said. “Re-reflect.” He poured himself his own cup of coffee, sat down in his chair, and put his feet up on the desk with elaborate carelessness. “I didn’t lie to you. There’s nothing more I can tell you about Captain America. Spent all day yesterday studying him, and you still probably know more than I do.” 

Fury nodded. “You’re right. That’s why I made the appointment. Some things I wanted to bring you up to speed on.” 

That gave Tony pause. He sipped his coffee and squinted at Fury. “You’re actually going to tell me something?” he asked. “Who are you, and what have you done with SHIELD Director Fury?” 

Fury’s expression remained stone-cold sober. “Funny. I came over to inform you that Captain America will be integrated into the Avengers Initiative when we feel that he’s ready to resume active duty.” 

Tony shrugged. “Indestructible chunk of blond, blue-eyed, square-jawed super-soldier. Probably good at following orders and playing nice with people. Sounds like the type.” 

“Anyone ever tell you that sarcasm doesn’t look as good on you as you think it does?” 

“Not recently. Anything else you want to share, other than that Captain America is good enough to join your little club and I’m not?” 

Fury ignored the bait and consulted his smartphone. “Are you in contact with Peggy Carter?” 

Tony shook his head. “Not really. She came to my parents’ funeral. We stayed in touch for a few years, but then . . . things happened, you know? She was their friend, really. Every now and then I have JARVIS track what’s going on with her. Just so that . . . you know.” 

“I can guess.” Fury’s voice seemed a bit gentler than before. “To save you the lookup time, she’s been declining mentally for a few years now, and her family has made the decision to place her in a facility.” 

“You want me to tell her about Captain America.” 

Fury glanced up sharply. “No. Under no circumstances. He’s not ready to hear the full news, and the word is that she wouldn’t be able to deal with it, either. I asked because I wanted to make sure that you would keep this confidential.” 

Tony shrugged.   “Not like I’m champing at the bit to start sharing random bits of information about Captain America with the world. You do remember that I’ve never actually met him, right?” 

Fury ignored his last statement, and called something up on his phone. “Do you have a place where I can project this?” 

“Why?” 

“Because I want you to see it, and I want you to see it big.” 

Fury sat back in his chair and waited. Tony could feel his curiosity springing to life and pushing insistently at his distrust of Nicholas Fury. The hell of it was, he could also feel that Fury was watching him with the mildly bored air of someone who knew exactly what reaction he was provoking and was simply waiting for it to play itself out. Tony held out as long as he could, but curiosity won in the end, as he suspected Fury had known that it would. He stretched out his hand. 

“Give me that.” 

One corner of Fury’s mouth quirked up into a little half-smile as he handed over his phone, but he didn’t say anything. Tony checked the phone over; though it wasn’t a StarkPhone, it was a good enough model that JARVIS would be able to interface with it. He got up and took the phone to a small plastic chest of drawers where he kept assorted plugs and cables and hooked the phone into a wall socket. “JARVIS, project.” 

The phone came to life and threw a set of schematics into the air. Tony saw a small satellite, and an imaging device that could be installed on the satellite. “This looks workable,” he said. “What am I looking at?” 

Fury glanced at the specs. “You’re looking at a DO-1038 radar altimeter mounted on the Polestar geosync satellite.” 

“Okay.” Tony nodded. “And why am I looking at it?”

“DO stands for Deep Ocean,” Fury said. “1038 meters is the average depth of the Arctic Ocean. Just launched recently. The guys at Thule Air Base were working on calibrating it when it picked up what turned out to be the remains of the plane that crashed with Captain America on board in 1945.” 

Tony huffed out an approving little laugh. “Good for them. Always nice to get something real on your first try.” 

“It gets better.” Fury took a deep breath. “You know anything about the DO-1038?” 

“Give me ten minutes with these specs, and I’ll know everything about it.” 

Fury rose from his chair and moved to stand directly in front of Tony, the altimeter schematics hanging in the air between them. “Everything except the important part,” he said. “Which is really why I came. The DO-1038 is the latest imaging technology that the country has. It refines and improves on older radar altimeters, which were themselves improvements on even earlier models.” 

Tony stretched his mouth into a tight, patient little smile. “This would go much faster if we both assumed that I know a little bit about how technology development works.” 

“Then you’ll know what I mean when I tell you that the DO-1038 is a third-generation refinement of the S-1000.” 

Tony couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response to that. Or, rather, he could think of at least ten half-complete thoughts that all whirled around in his head but never quite managed to find his mouth. He retreated behind his desk and groped for his coffee, only to discover that it had gone cold. He choked the mouthful of cold coffee down anyway, desperate for the jolt of caffeine that might help settle his mind, even if it did give him a twinge in his stomach. 

“That was Dad’s baby,” he said at last. “His first baby, I mean. Before me. I studied it at MIT. The professor had a real laugh over teaching me about it.” 

“It revolutionized undersea mapping,” Fury said, nodding at the schematics still floating in the air. 

Tony sat down. “Dad never was happy with it. I asked him about it once, when I came home for Christmas break. He said it never did what it was intended to do.” 

“I guess.” Fury shrugged. “The S-1000 was meant to find Captain America. Wasn’t quite powerful enough to overcome electromagnetic bias in the Arctic.” 

Tony nodded. “He kept tinkering with it well into my time. He was never satisfied with it.” 

Fury gave a half-smile. “He inspired a lot of other people, though. Caltech held a competition for a while, giving a small prize to graduate students improving on abandoned technology. One of those competition projects turned into a thing. Couple of iterations later, here we are. The DO-1038.” He gestured at the schematics. “Thought you’d like to know. Your father never found Captain America in his lifetime, but it was a descendant of his technology that did.” 

The image of an old film reel from 1974 floated through Tony’s mind. “He was limited by the technology of his time,” he murmured. “Well. Thanks for letting me know.” 

“Thought it might put your mind at ease.” 

Tony looked again at the schematics. “Who was the chief engineer on this?” he asked. 

Fury poked at his phone, and the floating image changed to reveal a photo, obviously cribbed from a university web site, of a smiling woman in her fifties, wearing a blue lab coat and posing in a lab. “Dr. Evelyn Meyerovitz, out at Berkeley.” 

“Good for her.” Tony wiped his hand over his face. “I’m glad to hear that. Was there anything else? Any more bombs you felt like dropping on me? Thanks for stopping by.” 

Fury smiled. “I can take a hint. It’s a lot to think about. I’ll be in touch.” He stood up, and Tony followed suit. He disconnected Fury’s phone from JARVIS, and let Fury pack it away while he filed the cord neatly in its drawer. Fury offered his hand, and after a moment, Tony took it. Fury’s handshake was firm and not overly long. “I’ll see myself out,” he said, and left the office. 

Tony remained at his desk for a long time, trying to figure out where all of the new things he had learned over the past few days could possibly fit into his already crowded life. 

Captain America would be joining the Avengers Initiative, while Tony himself didn’t play well enough with others. Well, that was nothing new; Tony had been on the receiving end of unfavorable comparisons to Captain America ever since he had learned to talk. Howard Stark’s genius had played a key role in finding Captain America in the end, but Howard was dead and could not be soothed, appeased, vindicated, or any other fifty-cent SAT word by that news. Captain America himself was back in the world, but there was no reason for Tony to invite the ghost of his childhood neglect into his corner of it. 

As far as Tony was concerned there was no reason to do anything other than continue on his previous path of using his own Stark genius to make the world a better place. Afghanistan had allowed him to see what that place really was; instead of coming up with new and ingenious ways to destroy the world, he would come up with new and ingenious ways to save it. And taking the Tower off the grid, the pilot program for his new sustainable energy system, had just become an even bitter priority than it had been. There was just one thing left to do before he threw himself into finishing that project with renewed vigor, and probably some vim, too. 

“JARVIS,” Tony said, “call Pepper, please.” 

“Certainly.” 

A second later, Pepper’s face floated in the projection space near his desk. “Tony,” she said. “How was your chat with Mr. Fury?” 

“Instructive,” Tony replied. “Listen, can I drop a teensy little line onto your to-do list?” 

“If I say no, will that stop you?” 

“Probably not.” Tony smiled. “This’ll be quick, I promise. Can you look up a Dr. Evelyn Meyerovitz, professor of engineering at Berkeley? Put together a competitive salary and research package, enough to lure her away from Berkeley.” 

Pepper snorted. “You think that’s a quick process?” 

“Whatever it takes. I want her working for Stark Industries, Pep.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Pepper sighed, but a smile wormed its way onto her face. “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.”

“Women engineers in industry, step in time,” Tony retorted. “Thanks, babe.” 

He cut the connection, pushed himself out of his chair, and made his way down to the lab to put the finishing touches on an undersea cable connection. He might not be Captain America, but he could do something good for the world, if only in his own technologically advanced way.

 


	3. A Man Of Value

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tip of the hat to [Val Mora](http://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora) for "Alien Space Viking!"

  1. **A Man Of Value**



  

 

Tony leaned back in his cheap, slightly bouncy chair – Bauhaus, he’d heard Pepper call the design once – and contemplated the bizarre series of events that had led to him sitting at a wobbly Formica table, with a red plastic basket of greasy, but undeniably delicious, roasted and spiced meat stuffed into a pita and surrounded by fries. Shawarma turned out to be not terrifically different from gyros, and Tony liked gyros, so this part of the day was an unqualified success. He was aware that his mind was wandering, leaping from point to point and seizing upon the least important details, but he decided that that was only to be expected after the day he’d had. Or days. Or eternity, really, since Bruce Banner, Captain America, and Thor, Alien Space Viking . . . God . . . Thing, had all expressed their suspicions that he had been technically dead for a few minutes or so. 

Tony’s mind slid away from that thought and landed on Agent Romanoff’s hair. It was shorter than it had been when they’d first met, and the curls were softer and less . . . product-y. Tony decided that he liked this look better. He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Agent Barton, but Romanoff clearly trusted him. He’d seen what she did to people she didn’t trust. And Barton had helped, in the end, after shaking off the effects of Romanoff’s percussive maintenance. Tony couldn’t imagine that Barton’s week had been especially fun and wholesome, especially with the alien mind control . . . 

Thor and Banner clearly shared his opinion about the food, which Tony found oddly gratifying. Now that the city was safe, from aliens and from the World Security Council, Tony could look forward to the unexpected opportunity to chat and exchange ideas with Banner. He wondered if he might be able to persuade him to stick around New York for a few days. It would be a refreshing change to have another mind of his own caliber to talk to. He could put Banner up in one of the guest rooms in Stark Tower. Assuming Stark Tower had any guest rooms left after the damage that Loki and the Chitauri had inflicted on it. 

Thor finished his sandwich, making a variety of “yummy” noises that somehow seemed less out of place on a six-and-a-bit-foot-tall alien prince than Tony had expected. He looked around for a waiter, clearly intending to ask for another sandwich. The movement roused Captain America from what could only be described as a stupor. The Captain slid his own mostly untouched basket of food over to Thor, and blinked mightily in a doomed effort to focus his eyes. 

Tony’s gaze swept around the table, but inevitably came back to Captain America. The one person he hadn’t wanted to meet, but who had turned out to be . . . well, not all that bad. At least, once they got past their rocky beginning. The initial fit of self-righteousness aside, Captain America wasn’t quite what Tony had been expecting. For one thing, he was much younger than Tony had pictured him. His old helmet from the newsreels and the hood on his new outfit both added ten or fifteen years to his age, giving him a commanding martial air and a certain sense of gravitas. Without the hood, Tony could see a shock of ruffled blond hair and tired blue eyes with enormous rings beneath them. 

Now that he thought about it, Tony had grown up knowing that Captain America had been his father’s dead war buddy. Howard Stark had been an old father, much older than the fathers of any of Tony’s schoolmates, and most of his friends that Tony had met were old as well. It was startling to see a reminder, sitting just at the end of the table, that Howard Stark might actually have been young and crazy once, instead of the dignified, endlessly disapproving commander of his own technological empire that Tony had known. 

Tony shifted uncomfortably at the thought, and his back twinged in protest, reminding him that he, too, was no longer as young as his father had been, and that he had died, fallen through an interdimensional portal, crashed, and had woken up inside a rigid metal suit. He needed a hot bath and a good night’s sleep in a real bed, one that, with any luck, also contained Pepper. He ate a few last fries, and cleared his throat. 

“Uh, guys?” he said. “Not that this hasn’t been a wild and crazy evening, but I’m thinking maybe it’s time to let someone else have the table.” 

The others stirred, more or less. Cap let out a soft moan. “I’m going to have to walk. The subway has one of those giant whales crashed into it.” He folded his arms on the table and buried his face in them. 

Banner sighed. “I’ll walk with you, if you’ll let me crash on your couch. I don’t exactly have a hotel room booked.” 

“We could probably find you billets at SHIELD,” Barton offered. “Natasha and I are going to see if they can put us up.” 

No one moved. In the silence, Tony could hear the restaurant owner talking on the phone. He imagined that someone would probably be in need of takeout after fleeing from the Chitauri, the Hulk, or both. 

After a moment, the owner approached the table, phone in hand. “Mr. Tony Stark?” he asked. 

“That’s me.” 

The owner held out the phone. “It’s for you.” 

Mildly puzzled, Tony took it. “Hello?” 

“Tony?” Pepper sounded as though she would burst into tears at any moment. 

“Pepper? How did you find --?”

“Tony! Oh, thank God you’re all right.” Pepper’s laugh was more than a bit hysterical. “I have been calling and calling and calling all over the place, and someone finally said they thought they saw you going into a fast-food place, and I had JARVIS look up the number of every joint in the area. Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.” 

“Against all the odds, I’m fine.” Tony glanced around the table. “I’ve just tried shawarma for the first time – it’s delicious, by the way, we really should put it on the cafeteria menu, or, on second thought, don’t, until we get someone who can cook it right, maybe one of the guys here might be looking to branch out – and I’m sitting here with the Avengers, which wasn’t a thing until a few hours ago, and they’re all fine except that Dr. Banner is the color of milk, which is a distinct improvement over being the color of grass, and Captain America is about to fall asleep into his French fries unless Thor the Friendly Alien eats them first.” 

Pepper was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure I got all that,” she said. “But the important part is, you’re okay. Can you come home?” 

Tony shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Um, Pep, I don’t know where you’ve been, but I’m not sure there is a home to come to. Unless you mean the Malibu place, and getting out there could be difficult right now.” 

“I’m at the Tower,” Pepper said. “There’s a lot of damage, particularly on the observation deck. But a lot of the lower floors are in okay shape. The atrium and the retail levels are pretty much a loss, and the office space needs serious cleanup. But some of the hotel floors made it through okay. We could camp out there for a bit. Give the honeymoon suite a trial run.” 

Tony had to smile at that. “And here I thought you didn’t care about the building.” 

“I told you. I care about it twelve percent,” Pepper replied. “The other eighty-eight percent is . . . well.” 

Soft snuffling noises came over the line, and Tony glanced away out of habit, even though Pepper couldn’t see him. His gaze came to rest on Captain America, and he blinked in surprise at what he saw.

Maybe it was the lack of his hood, or maybe it was the memory of the battle they’d just fought together. Or maybe it was the look of liquid despair on Cap’s face as he struggled to stay awake and gather himself for what Tony was sure would be a long and unpleasant walk back to wherever he lived. But, in the blink of an eye, Tony stopped seeing the upright and self-righteous embodiment of America’s towering military might. Instead, he saw a terribly young man, exhausted, hurt, and utterly at the end of his rope. He had commanded the Avengers into battle with no armor and no weapon but a shield. Now, the battle was over, and Cap had given everything he had, physically and, Tony realized, emotionally. 

And, as bad as Cap looked, the others didn’t look all that much better. Banner was pale and wobbly, and Romanoff and Barton were moving like geriatric puppets. Even Thor bore a passing resemblance to a train stopped on the middle of the prairie, or some appropriately bleak imagery like that. Tony couldn’t imagine that SHIELD would have a hotel room ready for Thor. But, he realized, he did. He turned his attention back to the phone. 

“Pepper? You okay?” 

The snuffling noises stopped. “I’m . . . yeah, I’m okay,” Pepper said, her voice only a little bit wavery. 

Tony smiled. “I’ll be home soon, promise. Uh, Pep . . . how would you feel about a sleepover party?” 

There was silence on the other end of the line for a long moment. “Tony, please tell me that you did not just manage to pick up another woman in . . . in whatever that mess downtown was.” 

“No, not like that,” Tony said. “Well, one other woman. But it’s not like that. You’ll like her. You know her.” 

“Tony . . .” 

This wasn’t coming out at all as Tony had intended. “No, Pepper, you do like her. Remember . . . remember whatshername, Natalie Rushman from Legal? The one who turned out to be a super ninja spy?” Agent Romanoff looked up sharply, but only stuck her tongue out at Tony before she resumed staring off into space. 

“Uh-huh.” Pepper still sounded skeptical. Tony didn’t blame her. 

“And the rest of them. Bruce Banner. Pepper, humor me. Bruce Banner is in town. How many opportunities do I have to geek out with a guy who lives . . .” Tony realized that he had no idea where SHIELD had found Banner. “. . . way, way the hell off the grid. And Nat has a . . . friend. And Thor, Pepper. Alien space Viking prince? He should probably be in, like, the White House, but getting him there would suck. And Captain America.” 

“Wait,” Pepper said. “Captain America? _The_ Captain America? The same Captain America that you’ve been obsessing over and studiously avoiding for the past two weeks?” 

Tony glanced over at Cap, who was trying to focus on him. “He’s . . . he’s not what I expected, Pep. He doesn’t really have anywhere to go. None of them do, not really. And if we have a few usable hotel floors . . . it’s not like anyone else is using the rooms, right?” 

Pepper sighed. “You know, Tony, one of these days, we have got to work on your sales pitch.” 

“Is that a yes?” 

“Of course it is! Bring them over. They saved New York. They saved . . . you. Of course they can stay here.” 

Tony let out a small sigh of relief. “Okay. We’re on our way. Love you.” He ended the call and flashed his trademark Tony Stark God-is-in-His-Heaven-and-all-is-right-with-the-world grin at his grimy, exhausted new friends. 

“No long urban treks for anyone, and no cheap SHIELD dorm rooms,” he announced. “You’re all going to help user-test the five-star hotel rooms in Stark Tower. It’s only a few blocks away, and then power showers and king-size beds with thirteen-inch pillow-top mattresses for everyone.” 

Cap shook his head. “I don’t think I can afford that.” 

“But I can,” Tony said. “And you are all my guests. It’s the least I can do. Unless you want to hike off through this war zone – and I’ve been in Afghanistan, I know war zones – to find some run-down old flophouse.” 

Banner offered a wan smile. “Stark Tower sounds fantastic. Thank you for your offer. We’d be glad to take you up on it.” 

Romanoff and Barton disentangled themselves from their chairs and stood up. Thor bounced up and looked around. “Where is the master who prepared this repast? I must show him my appreciation!” he boomed. The restaurant owner nudged himself a little further out of sight behind a refrigerator. 

Tony caught the man’s eye and waved his credit card. “A completely outrageous tip-slash-donation-to-the-rebuilding-fund ought to do just fine, big guy. How about you get Captain Sleepyhead functioning while I deal with the check? If he’s not on his feet by the time the charge goes through, you can put him over your shoulder and carry him.” 

Hearing that, Cap shook his head and started to push himself to his feet. Tony grinned and turned his attention to the restaurant owner, who had darted out to the cash register while Thor was distracted. 

 

 

Cap ended up walking to Stark Tower under his own steam, but he was wavering noticeably by the time the group picked their way through the debris to what was left of the atrium. Tony would have offered light congratulations, but he was distracted by Pepper climbing over the ruins of a grand escalator as fast as she could, heedless of the elegant once-white suit she was wearing. Finally, she closed the distance and flung herself into Tony’s arms. He wrapped her up in an embrace, and for a moment, the only sound either of them could make was Pepper’s almost-sobs of relief. 

“I thought you were dead,” she choked out. “I thought the city was going to go up in a mushroom cloud, and then you held a nuclear bomb in your hands, and you actually flew into a hole in the sky, and _I thought you were dead!_ ” 

Tony decided that this probably wasn’t the moment to tell Pepper just how close he had come to that, and grinned at her. “Mistakes were made,” he said. “Can I introduce you to our motley crew of houseguests, before they pass out all over the floor?” 

Pepper wiped her eyes and smiled. “Yes. Let’s get everyone squared away, and then we can have the rest of the evening.”

Tony enjoyed watching Pepper’s face as she struggled to put on and keep her air of smooth professionalism while being introduced to two honest-to-God secret assassins, one internationally renowned scientist with the biggest anger management problem Tony had ever seen, an alien who looked like Fabio, talked like bad Shakespeare, and bowed to Pepper as if she were the Queen of England, and Captain Fricking America, who gave her a quiet, sincere “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” just like in the documentaries. Pepper gulped, and tried not to stare, and it took her a good forty seconds to regain something approximating her normal aplomb. 

“The – the hotel floors are fifteen through thirty-five,” she said. “The twentieth floor is in the best shape, so that’s where we’re going to put you guys. Is that all right?” 

She received a series of dull nods in reply. 

“Okay. I’ll put Happy and JARVIS to work on finding pajamas for you, and we might be able to do some laundry if one or two of the machines in the back service area are still running.” She waved for them to follow her as she picked her way through the rubble to the back of the atrium. “The passenger elevators are shorted out, but there is a freight elevator working. It won’t be the fastest or the fanciest ride, but it’ll get you there in the end.” 

There was silence all through the elevator ride, and Tony pretended not to notice that Barton had slung an arm around Romanoff’s shoulders and that Cap and Banner were leaning heavily against the walls. When the elevator released them, Tony noted a few cracks in the hallway and one or two damaged light fixtures, but nothing that was terribly threatening. Pepper produced five key cards from her jacket pocket and showed the group how to use them. She glanced at them with an appraising eye. 

“I have a spare nightgown that you can use, Miss Rushma – Agent Romanoff,” she said. Her glance fell on Barton and Banner next. “Tony, could you spare some pajamas? These two are about your size.” 

She looked at Cap and Thor, and frowned. Tony thought for a moment, and had an idea. “Wasn’t Saks moving in downstairs?” he asked. “See if there’s something in their stockroom that’ll fit, and charge it on the Stark card.” 

Pepper nodded. “Put your clothes outside in the hallway,” she said. “We’ll arrange for it to be cleaned overnight. Everything else, we’ll work out in the morning.” 

“When do we need to clear out?” Barton asked. 

“No rush,” Tony said. “It’s not like anyone’s breaking down the doors for luxury hotel rooms in the middle of the Midtown War Zone.” 

“Though that’s not a bad idea,” Pepper added. “You guys can test the rooms and make sure that everything is safe, and we could open the rest of them up tomorrow night for people who need a place to stay.” 

“Sounds like a plan.” Out of the corner of his eye, Tony caught a blur of movement as Barton leaned on Romanoff and fell asleep standing, only to have Romanoff wake him with a sharp shove. 

“We appreciate the hospitality, ma’am,” Cap said, annoyingly polite even as he slurred his words like a seasoned wino. “I’d like to see everyone to their billets, make sure that they’re comfortable.” His head drooped, and he jerked it upright again. 

Pepper led them down the hall, handing out key cards as they came to particular rooms. Finally, she and Tony led Cap to the last room at the end of the hall, a room that would have had a particularly gracious view if there weren’t alien corpses and giant space whale skeletons littering the city at the moment. Cap’s hands were shaking with exhaustion, but he managed to fit the key card into the slot, and the door clicked open. 

“Do you need us to show you how anything works?” Pepper asked. 

Cap shook his head. “I think I can figure out what I need.” 

“Okay. Call 3-8798 to reach one of us if you need anything. Leave your clothes outside the door when you take a shower, and we’ll put pajamas outside for you in a few minutes. In the meantime, there’s a robe in the closet.” 

Cap nodded his thanks and hung his head as he slid into the room. “Good night,” he murmured, and closed the door behind him. 

“Poor kid,” Pepper said. “He just looks done in. Do you think he’ll even make it to the shower?” 

“Let’s hope,” Tony said. “And let’s not think about him any more. Let’s go inaugurate the honeymoon suite.” Despite a protest from his back, he swept Pepper up into his arms and carried her back to the elevator. She gave a muffled shriek of delight and swatted playfully at Tony’s nose before she kissed him. 

He set her back on her feet in the elevator – he was a romantic, but he was a romantic who had been through an exceptionally long and physically punishing day – and pressed the button to the top hotel floor. Pepper pulled out her cell, called her assistant to give instructions about pajamas and the Avengers’ laundry, and then made a show of turning the ringer off and stowing it in her purse. “All yours, Mr. Hero,” she said. 

The elevator dinged, and they emerged onto the thirty-fifth floor and its promise of an enormous bed draped with gauze curtains.


	4. Renewal Of Body, Renewal Of Spirit

  1. **Renewal Of Body, Renewal Of Spirit**



  

 

Tony stared out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the thirty-fifth-floor lounge at what should have been the shining lights of Manhattan, the heart of the City That Never Sleeps. Instead of the twinkle of light from high-rises, the sparkle of traffic, and the glow of the theater district, he saw emergency lights blinking red, and the harsh white glare of command stations where workers were toiling through the night, removing corpses both human and alien from the streets. Inevitably, his thoughts circled back to the central point that had driven him here. _I could have been one of those corpses. I was one of those corpses. Everyone in this city could have been a corpse._ Variations on that theme had jolted him awake twice so far, and he hadn’t wanted to risk waking Pepper with a third time. So he had crept out of the honeymoon suite – which did, in fact, boast an exceptionally good bed – and had taken up residence in the lounge. 

As he looked at the city licking its wounds below him, Tony tried to remember what it had been like being dead. He thought he remembered the blinding flash of the bomb detonating, but he couldn’t quite grasp what had come after that. He might have been floating – or maybe he remembered falling – and there was a distinct sense that, for an instant, he had grasped what the concept of infinity actually meant, but now it hovered maddeningly just out of his understanding. 

The click of the door handle broke Tony’s reverie. He groaned, thinking that Pepper had woken up after all and had come to find him. He turned around, ready to reassure her that he was all right, that all he needed was a bit of alone time. But instead of Pepper Potts standing in the doorway, he saw Captain America. 

Except . . . it wasn’t Captain America. The young man who stood just inside the doorway wore borrowed pajamas, so new that they still had creases in them, and a wool blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair stuck up in random directions around his head, and his wide blue eyes were shadowed with distress. He looked miserable, and terrifyingly young. Nothing about him resembled the confident, smiling, red-white-and-blue figure that had decorated the notebooks, bubble gum cards, and classroom Valentines of Tony’s childhood. 

Howard Stark had hated almost all Captain America memorabilia, even the decorations he had chosen for Tony’s sixth birthday, and especially the lunchbox that Obadiah Stane had given Tony. More than once, he had tried to explain to Tony that Captain America and Steve Rogers were not the same person and that anyone with half a brain would prefer Steve Rogers. At six, or at nine, or at eleven, Tony hadn’t understood what his father meant, but Howard’s words filtered their way back into his brain now, and he finally got it. The person standing in front of him wasn’t Captain America, the childhood role model that Tony could never imitate well enough. Captain America was just a character played by Steve Rogers, a lost, frightened kid who was probably here for the same reasons as Tony. And Tony didn’t know Steve Rogers very well at all. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked. 

Cap – _Steve_ startled a bit, looked around, and finally noticed Tony. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were in here. I can leave you alone if you want.” He turned to leave. 

Tony frowned. “What are you doing awake?” he asked. “Couple of hours ago, you looked like you were ready to fall asleep for at least a week.” 

“I slept a little.” Steve shrugged. “Didn’t last.” 

“Bad dreams?” 

Steve turned around and looked Tony in the eye for the first time. He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and closed it again. After a moment, he started again. “Nothing I can’t live with.” 

It was a good effort, particularly coming from someone as clearly worn out and disoriented as Steve was. But Tony knew what manly bravado looked like – he’d done it enough for the cameras himself – and he had seen the false start. 

“I dreamed about falling,” he said. “I mean, that’s not new or anything. I’ve dreamed about falling a lot over the last couple of years. This one was just more intense than usual. Which is weird, because I don’t think I really remember falling. It’s like, I know that I fell, but I wasn’t there at the time. I think – I remember knowing that the bomb would probably kill me. The gas and debris hitting me, if nothing else. Only so much you can do with a squishy body in a metal suit, you know? And so, I think I knew that I was dead. And then . . . I woke up, and I was back in Manhattan. It’s just the weirdest thing, being dead, and then bam! You’re in New York. It’s the weirdest thing, you know?” 

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Tony winced, and wished that he could erase the last ten seconds of his life. Of course Steve knew what it was like to die in battle and wake up in New York. Great. They hadn’t even known each other for more than a few days, and already Tony had insulted his childhood . . . idol? Nemesis? Whatever. He hadn’t done well. He started to apologize, but stopped short. 

Steve was staring at him with a look of startled, hopeful recognition on his face. “I do know,” he choked out. “No one else understands. I knew that I was going to die, and I wasn’t – I was frightened of the pain, but I wasn’t afraid to die, and I remembered to say the _Shema_ , and I was finally –“ A shadow of pain passed over his face, and he blinked hard for a few moments. “And then I woke up, and everything’s been . . . wrong.” 

He took a few steps further into the room, coming to stand just over an arm’s length from Tony. 

“You’ve got dreams, too,” Tony said. 

Steve nodded. 

“Nothing you can do about it,” Tony said. “Well, technically, there is. But it involves spending time and money to talk about your feelings with a paid professional, and there are so many things to do that are more appealing than that.” 

Steve shivered, and wrapped the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. “I don’t know what to do. I wasn’t supposed to be alive.” 

In the dim glow of the city lights, the shadows under Steve’s eyes looked enormous. Tony took a step toward him and frowned. 

“Can I ask – sorry, this is rude, but I feel like – how old are you?” 

Steve looked mildly surprised at the question. “I’m . . . I was born in 1918. And this is the year – wait. Fury told me. I forgot. Is it 2011 or 2012?” 

“No, not that.” Tony shook his head. “I mean, how old were you on your last birthday? The last one that you can remember having.” 

“Oh. I turned twenty-six. We raided a HYDRA munitions depot.” A soft smile tugged at the corner of Steve’s mouth. “Bucky found a chocolate bar in the commander’s office, and he gave it to me afterwards for a birthday present.” 

Twenty-six years old, and Steve had already become a war veteran and lost everything he had ever known and loved. Tony tried to remember what he had been doing at twenty-six. He had been CEO of Stark Industries for nearly five years, although Stane had been nearly as powerful in his “advisory” role at the time. Especially, he was embarrassed to admit, in light of Tony’s preference for women and booze over actually showing up to work in the morning. From his vantage point fifteen years later, Tony knew that he had desperately needed a guiding hand at twenty-six. And Steve had lost everything. 

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you right now,” he said, and stopped, because, really, what could one say after that opening?

Fortunately, Steve wasn’t paying attention to Tony’s little sleep-deprived screw-ups. Instead, he was looking at Tony with an intensity that was almost hungry, and that might have made Tony uncomfortable in a less surreal setting. 

“You’re Howard’s son,” Steve said, in a voice that suggested that he could barely believe his own words. “Howard Stark had a son.” 

“And here I am, fifteen years older than you,” Tony replied. It was a strange thought; Captain America had always been older, a grown-up, responsible man to be emulated and revered. But Steve Rogers was too young even to be a plausible little-brother figure. 

Steve’s gaze swept back and forth over Tony’s face, and Tony knew that he was searching for a family resemblance, trying to find the familiar in a stranger’s face. “I can see it, I think,” he said at last. “There, in the mouth, and the angle of the jaw.” His voice trailed off as a new thought struck him. “If Howard had a son, then that means . . . did he . . .who . . . not – it couldn’t be --?” 

It took Tony a few seconds longer than he would have liked to put together what Steve was trying to ask. “No,” he said. “Peg Carter isn’t my mom. My mom was – you didn’t know her. She’s dead now, anyway.” 

Steve’s shoulders slumped a little. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I knew about Howard, but . . .” 

“It was a long time ago.” 

Steve sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah. I guess – a lot of things were a long time ago.” 

“But not for you,” Tony heard himself say.

Steve nodded, and sat down heavily on one of the large sofas in the lounge. He burrowed deeper into his blanket, and took a few deep breaths, sounding very much like someone trying desperately not to cry. 

_Shit_. Tony had lived through more awkward situations in his life than he cared to admit – including one shameful, alcohol-blurred memory of pissing himself in his suit in front of a crowd of delighted party guests – but he had no idea what to do while watching an honest-to-God superhero and living legend fighting back tears on his sofa. Steve’s breath hitched, and, without really thinking about it, Tony sat down next to him and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve turned toward him, his eyes shining and liquid. 

“You miss your friends,” Tony said. It was stating the obvious, but it was something, at least. 

Steve swallowed hard. “They lived their whole lives,” he said. “Colonel Fury gave me a dossier, and I saw the dates. They lived to be old men. I can’t imagine them being old. All the things they must have done, and seen, their families. So much happened, and I don’t know about it.” 

“I can help you find out. That’s not hard.” 

“Peggy’s still alive, I think.” Steve glanced quickly at Tony, and then turned to look out the window. “Her dossier didn’t say she was deceased, anyway. It gave an address in England.” 

This was heading into the territory that Fury had warned Tony about. Tony had been flip about it at the time, but it was a different thing entirely now that he was actually sitting with Steve. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was, in fact, telling the truth. Fury hadn’t said anything about where her nursing home was. “She’s with her family. We kind of lost touch over the years. I don’t know much more than that.” 

Steve nodded, as if he had expected something like that. “It’s a horrible thing, but I don’t know if I want to find her. Maybe . . . I don’t know if I could bear to see – see what . . .” 

“You don’t have to,” Tony said quickly. “Not right now. I think – everybody knows about you two. I’m sure Fury would let you know if, you know, if she were getting ready to . . . well, if anything were to happen.” He hoped that was true. 

Steve seemed to accept it, at least. He took a few more deep, ragged breaths. “Do you know . . . did she have a good life?” 

Tony shrugged. “I think so. I knew her a bit when I was a kid. She was friends with my parents.” 

“That’s good,” Steve said. “She and Howard did get along.” 

“She was married and had a couple of kids,” Tony said, “but I don’t remember ever meeting them. They were older than me. I never met her family, but I remember my mom asking about them.” 

“It’s hard to imagine her as a mother,” Steve said. “Pregnant and wearing one of those smocks.” 

_Especially because those kids weren’t yours_ , Tony’s brain commented. He kept his mouth shut on that, and shook his head. “I can’t picture it, either,” he said. “But I guess she handled it like she handled everything. She was . . . terrifyingly competent. My dad respected her, which was impressive, and my mom loved her.” 

“I’m glad,” Steve said. “I’m glad she got to live.” 

A moment after the words left his mouth, a strange expression passed over Steve’s face. He leaned over, bent nearly double, and for a moment, Tony thought that he was going to throw up. But all that came out was a soft, creaking, high-pitched moan. It dawned on Tony that the recent battle, and possibly the sight of him falling from the sky, had refreshed another of Steve’s losses, decades in the past but still painfully new. 

One of Howard’s favorite topics of, if not necessarily conversation, at least spirited holding-forth, had been all the things that the world didn’t know about Captain America. As assimilated and comfortable with Maria’s Catholic traditions as he was, he had abhorred Captain America-themed Christmas cards and Christmas tree ornaments. 

“People couldn’t handle the truth about Steve Rogers,” he had told Tony once. It had been just after Thanksgiving. Maria had been writing out batches of family Christmas cards, which Jarvis addressed and Tony sealed and stamped. Howard had walked in on this scene upon arriving home from work, and had found a Captain America card that someone had sent them. “They want to see their All-American boy with the gleaming teeth lighting the Christmas tree with his best girl on his arm. They don’t want to see a little bar mitzvah boychik from Brooklyn, and his –“ 

A gentle but pointed harrumph from Jarvis had interrupted him. 

“Well,” Howard had said, coughing a little, “maybe you’re still a bit young for some things.” 

Tony, eleven and a half years old, had responded with a long groan of “Daaaaaad!” 

Howard had exchanged a loaded look with both Jarvis and Maria. At the time, Tony hadn’t quite been sophisticated enough to interpret his parents’ silent conversations, but he was certainly old enough to know that there was something there to be interpreted. He’d waited, excited to see who would win. After a moment, Howard had shrugged. 

“That friend of his, Sergeant Barnes,” Howard had said. “Look, nobody ever did know what the deal was with them. But everyone knew something was up. They were always together. You never saw anyone so hung up on a fellow as Rogers and Barnes were on each other. The only ones who couldn’t see it were them.” 

Seeing Steve sitting on the sofa, choking out short little gasps of grief, too hurt even to cry properly, Tony had no doubt in his mind that everything that Howard had hinted at was true, whether Steve had ever acknowledged it or not. He had no idea what that meant about Peg Carter – and who was he to judge, really? – but it was clear that Tony Stark was witnessing the first real wave of what was sure to be Steve’s shattering grief over Sergeant Barnes and the entire world that Steve had lost with him. It was at moments like this that Tony wished that his mother or Jarvis were still alive, or even that Pepper would spontaneously wake up and come to his side to help him. The kid who had been blown through the second-floor window of a bank, had fallen onto a car, and who had pushed himself to his feet and walked it off now looked as though he would fall to pieces at any moment. 

But no one came to help, and Tony realized that he was on his own. Another one of his father’s legacy projects left for him to fix, except that this one had looked him in the eye, searching him for any trace of his father. This one hadn’t been all Howard’s work. Tony reached out a tentative hand and placed it high on Steve’s back, between his shoulder blades. He could feel Steve’s frame singing with tension as he shuddered and struggled. 

“It’s okay,” he heard himself say. That was stupid. Of course things weren’t okay, or else neither of them would be here, awake in the night and trying to flee their nightmares. “Well, no,” he said. “Everything is terrible right now. I get that. But . . .” _What would Pepper say?_ “It’s okay to cry here. Just you and me. I won’t tell. I’ll look out for you, you know? Make sure you’re not alone.” 

Steve turned around and looked at Tony, the utter misery in his expression leavened with a tiny glint of hope. “You . . . you’d stay?” he hiccupped. “You don’t have to. I – I can . . . I can leave.” 

“No, you can’t,” Tony said. He chewed his lip a little, trying to put himself inside the utterly alien mind of a soulless, humorless, and underfunded government agency. “SHIELD is putting you up somewhere, right?” 

Steve gave a shaky little nod. 

“And it’s in a boring neighborhood, and it’s relentlessly grim, and you’re all alone there?” 

Steve choked a few times. “Bigger than any place I ever lived before. With a fancy icebox and everything.” 

“And no one to catch you when you fall down.” 

“I can’t fall,” Steve said. “I don’t – I haven’t earned it.” 

Tony sighed, recalling the months after his parents had died, when he had been as low as Steve was now. The Jarvises and Obadiah Stane had stayed at his side, making sure that he didn’t fall irretrievably into despair. He took a deep breath and hoped that his next idea would be more Jarvis than Stane. 

“Why don’t you stay here for a while?” he asked. “The place is a little beat up, but I’ll have that fixed soon. You can be in a nice, comfortable hotel room, and Pepper and I would be right there.” 

Steve dropped his gaze. “I couldn’t afford it.” 

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, you’ve said that. Look, I own the building. If I say it’s okay for you to stay, then it’s okay for you to stay. The only question is, do you want to do that? Or would you rather go back to your icebox in Alphabet City or wherever they put you?” 

There was silence for a long moment. As it stretched out, Tony became increasingly convinced that he knew the answer to his question, the answer that Steve didn’t want to give out loud. At last, Steve bowed his head and huffed out a long sigh that could have been relief, or resignation, or possibly a little bit of both. Tony relaxed a little, and gave Steve’s shoulder a little squeeze. 

“Stay as long as you need,” he said. “I could probably use an extra pair of hands in clearing up some of this debris, too. But only after you’ve had some sleep.” 

Steve barked out a humorless laugh that was more than half a cough. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep through the night again.” 

Tony shrugged, and tried to keep his voice light. “Well, tonight’s a lost cause, but you know what Scarlett O’Hara says. Tomorrow is another day.” A thought struck him, and he smiled a little. “Hey, that’s another old movie from your time. Did you, you know, see it?” 

“Yeah.” Steve nodded. “After the prices dropped in ’41. I went with . . . with . . .” His voice trailed off, and he started to shudder again. 

“I get it,” Tony said quickly. “It’s okay. Do what you need to do.” He started to get up, and Steve flopped forward, his head in his hands. 

Once again, Tony felt the chill of realizing that someone else needed him to be the grownup and make a bad situation, if not better, at least more bearable. He took a deep breath, and considered the sight of Captain America, twisted up in a blanket and pajamas, mostly sitting on a sofa in the thirty-fifth floor lounge of Stark Tower, too deep in his grief to stand or move anywhere. Tony had seen the competent superhero that his father had created and then talked about for the rest of his life; the grieving young man who needed the shelter of a friend was for Tony to take care of on his own. He wondered what Pepper might do. 

“Hey,” he said. “Looks like you’re not going anywhere for a while. Let’s make you a bit more comfortable, okay?” 

He loosened the blanket from around Steve’s shoulders and helped him to lie down on the sofa with a cushion under his head. Steve curled up, facing the back of the sofa, and Tony draped the blanket around him. 

“There. That’s better.” He paused, not quite sure what to do next. “Okay. A couple of things could happen now. I could go away, leave you to do what you need to do, on your own, no one watching, no one will ever know. Or I could stay here a while longer. Not really so much with the talking, but . . . I could just stay here. Got a preference?” 

Steve was quiet for a while, and Tony started to wonder if he’d managed to fall asleep after all. Just as he started to think about leaving, Steve murmured, “Stay.” 

Tony nodded. “Okay. I’ll stay.” 

He found a deep, soft armchair and settled into it. His back would probably be extremely unhappy if he fell asleep in it, but then, he’d originally come here precisely because he couldn’t sleep. He glanced out over the city skyline. The buildings and the emergency lights and the broken bits hadn’t changed. Steve shifted a little on the sofa and let out a few smothered, snuffly cries. At last, despite everything, a sense of – well, not peace, but . . . balance settled over Tony. He relaxed a little in his chair and started to think about how he might re-design the upper decks of Stark Tower and make it even better than it had been.

 

 

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story! As the MCU has progressed, I’ve been more and more intrigued by the relationship that the films seem to be trying to set up between Steve and Tony. They keep hinting at and referencing much more than is actually on the screen. So there’s plenty of room to step in and just . . . play a bit.
> 
> While _Gone With The Wind_ did technically come out in 1939, it was such a Big Deal Movie that it was shown in a limited run in only the fanciest of movie theaters for a relatively high ticket price. In 1941, it finally had its wide release at “popular prices,” which is probably when Steve would have been able to go see it.


End file.
